Slashdot Mirror
Violent Video Games Can Improve Vision
Ponca City, We love you writes "According to a new study, people who played fighting games on their PCs became up to a 58 percent better at perceiving fine contrast differences, an important aspect of eyesight. The breakthrough is significant because it was previously thought that the ability to notice even very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background could not be improved. Contrast sensitivity is the primary limiting factor in how well one sees. Volunteers in the study played intensively for 50 hours over nine weeks with either Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty 2, and the results were compared with another group who played The Sims 2, which is richly visual but does not require as much hand-eye coordination. The improvements lasted for months after game play stopped. The new finding suggests action video games could be used as training devices as a useful complement to eye-correction techniques, since gaming may teach the brain's visual cortex to make better use of the information it receives."
your ability to wrestle with complex issues of morality, history, philosophy, the nature of mankind, the purpose of violence, its consequences, and so forth and so on.
go to any video game website, try to find some meaningful discussion there related to the bigger issues of life.
invariably you are met with brutish impudence. it is not that video game addicts do not have opinions on these matters, but that the discussion of such items in a reasonable and discoursive manner has fallen beyond the reach of their crushed and broken minds.
impulsive action, reaction, twitch, and the inexorable logic of tactic, teamwork, command, and control, bursts of sputum and vile reproachments,,, these are the language of the internet video game discussion boards, and they are the primary building blocks of violent video games.
Almost every week in /. there is an story about the supposed benefits of some weird aspect of gaming.
To me this implies that /. editors feel guilty of loving games because they really know they're damaging their body (tired eyes, overweight, talking incoherences, etc.) so need every possible excuse to continue with the addiction.
If we want an accurate headline it should be: "Violent Video games can Improve One Aspect of Vision"